Archive for March, 2007

Apologies, readers (helloo? anyone out there?) for how remiss I’ve been lately. All the neglect has me feeling as guilty as a Catholic. And I’m Jewish, so its all a little crazy right now.

The trial turned into an Arbitration and our 5 day estimation on the leading of evidence turned into 10 days. But of course I board the beast (if you know what I mean…) in the not to distant future and make my way over to frog-filled forests so such things will need to continue without me.

A man who’s influence over the sporting world spread far and wide – from his marginal success as an English cricketer, to his resounding successes with the South African cricket side (well resounding is perhaps a little strong – his team were by far the best one day international side in the arena of the time, but they couldn’t get a world cup win in the bag), not to mention his controversial views on ball tampering

And so, there is only really one thing left to do: make terrible jokes at his demise. Without further ado:

“It’s official – the Pakis are real chokers…”

“Pakistan may not have won the cricket – but they’ll win the Bobslay…”

Well that last one, as The Man pointed out to me over the naweek, is more of an aural quip.

And my trial is going great (thanks for asking). The Claimant’s lead witnesses has kicked off. In Afrikaans. Fucker. How the hell am I supposed to be canny and cunning in a language I only barely understand? I had to pass high-school Afrikaans by making up books to do “book reviews” on. If only my teacher knew – I could have had a book deal.

The reason for the new Audi R8 pic? My boss has it on pre-order and just received this email

We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for placing an order for the new Audi R8 with Lindsay Saker Audi.

Audi Centre Sandton is the sole Audi R8 franchise holder for the Lindsay Saker group and therefore we will be responsible for the delivery of your new Audi R8.

Audi SA are in possession of all Audi R8 orders placed in South Africa and they will be contacting you with more information.

South Africa is scheduled to receive a limited volume of Audi R8’s during the last quarter of 2007. Once we have received our allocation of vehicles and a list of available options from Audi SA, we will contact you to determine your requirements.

Kind Regards,

Mr. Some Guy Ms. Some Chick
General Manager Sales Manager

The only thing to think about now is whether to sink serious money into four wheels or the college funds. Hey, you can’t take it with you! Although some have tried…

Don’t you hate those startling realisations, epiphanies if you will, that really fuck with the way you have always perceived and understood the world? Like when you found out for the first time that Aerosmith weren’t actually singing “do the lucky lady” or when you were laughed at for thinking that Credence Clearwater Revival were telling you that “there’s a bathroom on the right“.

I stumbled across this exciting page the other day, that sets out to show that everything you’ve ever known and trusted about the world (thanks to Mikey and Steve in Grade 2) is in fact wrong.

Its bloody terrific!

Of course some of the espoused facts could only be believed by a complete moron but some of them really surprised me. I mean I thought that the fact that men thought about sex every seven seconds was scientific gospel, but no:

Males are driven to reproduce, evolutionarily speaking, but there is no scientific way of measuring to what extent that desire consumes their everyday lives. Thankfully, for world productivity as a whole, seven seconds seems a gross overstatement, as best researchers can tell.

And how about this absolute shocker (apologies in advance…). I bet that you always thought that lightning never struck the same place twice. Haha, in fact:

Lightning favours certain spots, particularly high locations. The Empire State Building is struck about 25 times every year. Ben Franklin grasped the concept long ago and mounted a metal rod atop the roof of his home, then ran a wire to the ground, thereby inventing the lightning rod.

I know, I know, its difficult to deal with all at once. But the coup de grâce for me was this little gem:

It takes seven years to digest gum?

While it may prove a bit more difficult to break down than organic foodstuffs, chewing gum gets no special treatment from the digestive system. Doctors figure this old wives’ tale was invented to prevent kids from swallowing the rubbery substance.

In perhaps the most arbitrary move by an international organisation since 12 people decided to march in the Johannesburg yesterday afternoon in an attempt to raise awareness on crime (look pal, if you haven’t cottoned on yet…), a deputy in the state legislature of Lower Saxony, Germany has convinced fellow Social Democrats to file a motion to review whether the citizenship of Adolf Hitler, extended in 1932 can be rescinded, sixty-two years after his death.

This particular politician seems to think that the move would be a “symbolic step” against the Nazi leader and the horrors he unleashed and was reported as saying that:

“…while the gesture of rescinding citizenship carried symbolic importance, it is not my intention to whitewash Nazi history … This should never serve to play down history along the lines of ‘Look, he wasn’t a German at all…'”

Well you’ll forgive us then for thinking that you’re a complete twat. Without downplaying the events of yesteryear, dead is, well, dead and raising the issue now seems to smack of self-serving political grandstanding.

My apologies for even mentioning it. Here is something to take the edge off:

** Update : It would appear that Champers and her social conscience are pretty annoyed at the lack of walkers at yesterday’s march. Hate to let the team down, but I think we all know the extent to which crime is a problem. And I had a serious poker game on at the Jolly. Priorities. **

This one does go on a bit, so do bear with me. (alternatively link here and just avoid the whininess of this whole thing)

I think its fairly trite to point out to the world at large but I’ll do so anyhow for the record: breaking up is hard to do.

I mean for crapcakesake there is an entire website out there dedicated to ensuring that people avoid it. (how I stumbled upon that is another story all together. it’s a good one. I will one day regale you with it. It contains a cyber-girlfriend. And dragons.)

Most recent girlfriend and I dated for almost a year and a half (a long enough period sure, but by no means earth shattering stuff for most and in no way monumental when considered relative to my personal relationship history) before what had started out as a relationship devolved into a relationshit.

You see when my travel plans crawled out of the den of iniquity in which they were not so much hiding as looking for a good time and I quit my corporate law job with the intention of finding a forest to hide out in and possibly write bad poetry and contemplate which frogs looked fun to lick, I was pretty uncertain of how said plans would affect the relationship (as it then was).

In any event I was pretty blasé about the whole affair. I adored her. I had it on good authority that she was in love with me. And her boobs were terrific. So obviously there was no end in sight (well, except those ends that needed to be).

All went well at first, I had plans involving couches in a smorgasbord of difficult to traverse countries and she was heading well on her way in her chosen career. We were smiling and the aksie was excellent.

That was until I realised that absolutely nothing about my future plans seemed to make any difference to her. Talks of which hostel to hit where etc, instead of being an exciting mind-trip into the world which we could share, ultimately derogated into sullen silence or an entirely unrelated fight (women are masters of the art of this and no amount of lawyering on my side could extract me from the kak I inevitably, if inexplicably, found myself in, although as an aside, lawyering and relationships go together like eels and things that eels really really don’t like).

And, like daybreak in Ankh-Morpork it slowly dawned on me that the two of us had completely and utterly ceased to connect in any meaningful way. Kaboom. Nothing. From a beautiful, expressive and passionate relationship to a disconnected, meaningless liaison in less than 3 seconds.And if you trust Antoine de Saint-Exupery (which I wouldn’t if I were you) “to love is not to look at one another, but to look together in the same direction“. And that we weren’t doing.

So overskidovers. I pulled out the old “its not me its you” and after “giving it a week to see if there is no other way to save us and spend the time having angry desperate (awesome) I-don’t-want-to-lose-you sex” we called it a day.

Good night sweet princess.

I’m feeling pretty cut up about it. Especially because the derogation and breakup were caused predominantly by circumstances and not because of any inherent flaw in our connection. And unfortunately there is no quick fix for a lad ala Peas’ bushwhacker or Champagne’s new Ohmybod for the present lack of regular sex.

Which brings me to the actual point of this post – about a month ago (possibly more, I can’t recall exactly) I met this cooker of a blonde. Doctor. Spicy. Funny. Sexy as a Justin Timberlake song. The whole package. We swapped digits. No contact was made.